Plus ça change …

… plus c’est la même chose.

An update to The never ending story. Rupert Wyndham impressed me with his warnings of thermageddon from the past but today I stumbled on a little collection posted by Tim Blair in 2009. I’ll post the link below but I think it far more fun to take the last item first.

All quotes are from The New York Times …

• 2005: “Another melancholy gathering of climate scientists presented evidence this month that the Antarctic ice shelf is melting – a prospect difficult to imagine a decade ago.”

The emphasis, I confess, is mine. A decade earlier would have been 1995. Now a journey back in time with Tim and the New York Times  …

• 1881: “This past Winter, both inside and outside the Arctic circle, appears to have been unusually mild. The ice is very light and rapidly melting …”

• 1932: “NEXT GREAT DELUGE FORECAST BY SCIENCE; Melting Polar Ice Caps to Raise the Level of Seas and Flood the Continents”

• 1934: “New Evidence Supports Geology’s View That the Arctic Is Growing Warmer”

• 1937: “Continued warm weather at the Pole, melting snow and ice.”

• 1954: “The particular point of inquiry concerns whether the ice is melting at such a rate as to imperil low-lying coastal areas through raising the level of the sea in the near future.”

• 1957: “U.S. Arctic Station Melting”

• 1958: “At present, the Arctic ice pack is melting away fast. Some estimates say that it is 40 per cent thinner and 12 per cent smaller than it was fifteen years [ago].”

• 1959: “Will the Arctic Ocean soon be free of ice?”

• 1971: “STUDY SAYS MAN ALTERS CLIMATE; U.N. Report Links Melting of Polar Ice to His Activities”

• 1979: “A puzzling haze over the Arctic ice packs has been identified as a byproduct of air pollution, a finding that may support predictions of a disastrous melting of the earth’s ice caps.”

• 1982: “Because of global heating attributed to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fuel burning, about 20,000 cubic miles of polar ice has melted in the past 40 years, apparently contributing to a rise in sea levels …”

• 1999: “Evidence continues to accumulate that the frozen world of the Arctic and sub-Arctic is thawing.”

• 2000: “The North Pole is melting. The thick ice that has for ages covered the Arctic Ocean at the pole has turned to water, recent visitors there reported yesterday.”

• 2002: “The melting of Greenland glaciers and Arctic Ocean sea ice this past summer reached levels not seen in decades, scientists reported today.”

• 2004: “There is an awful lot of Arctic and glacial ice melting.”

Cross my heart …

I promise you I wrote simpltons before reading this piece, it is satire, isn’t it? Written by a Liberal Party agent provocateur, surely? Gotta love Grumpy’s comment.

Are Volvo’s cool now? Don’t Domino’s pizzas still taste like cardboard? Clear air … isn’t it polluted with carbon dioxide? Always was … you’re kidding me.

Simpletons …

From the very outset of Gillard’s government, she and her ministers have seen Tony Abbott as an easy target. Let’s face it, he’s stiff and he’s religious, nerdy. It obviously seemed like a good idea to play the man not the ball. Everything was blamed on the AbbottAbbottAbbott. Even the famous misogyny speech was an ad hominem attack … the ball, for those who lost sight of it, was Mr Slipper.

Tony turns out to a bit like an onion. As the attacks took off layer after layer it revealed a fresh, juicy, wholesome interior. Is he a simpleton? How many simpletons were Rhodes Scholars? He graduated with a Master’s degree from Queens College, Oxford. A whole bunch of other things weren’t obvious on the surface, years of voluntary work with aboriginal projects and with the Rural Fire Brigade. He’s the misogynist with a female chief of staff!

You’d think they’d learn. Someone once said “No publicity is bad publicity”, to which Brenda Behan added ” … except your own obituary.” Mr Abbott can thank Julia and Penny for giving him plenty of publicity and as they have done so their standing has fallen and his has done nothing but rise. They are writing their own obituaries.

So desperate are they to land a telling blow on Mr Negative they have not paused for a moment to consider the counter punch. This last jibe is a gift to Abbott, a free kick and fifty meter penalty … Abbott is an economic simpleton, Abbott is a wrecking ball. This from an outfit that had the luxury of being elected with a budget in surplus and have run up a massive debt, and with modestly declining income are determined to spend vastly more. They did promise to get back to surplus and as with all their promises they’ve got nowhere near keeping it.

Do you remember this little interview ... ?

JOURNALIST:  If you don’t make a, get the Budget back in to surplus in 2012-2013, this is a question to both of you, the cameras are on – will you resign?

PM:  (laughs) The Budget is coming back to surplus, no ifs no buts it will happen.

JOURNALIST:  So that’s a ‘yes’?

PM:  Matthew, I know and you know like these questions during campaigns but the Budget’s coming back to surplus.  There’s no credible analysis on our economic plan that it won’t come back to surplus.  I haven’t added a cent to it during this election campaign.  The figures are plain, they’re transparent, they’re from the Budget.  They’re there from the Mid-year Fiscal and Economic Outlook, they’re there from the Pre-Election Fiscal and Economic Outlook.  The figures are there for all to see.  

The figures are there for all to see, simpletons …

The never ending story …

Address by the President of the Royal Society to their Lordships of the Admiralty …

It will, without doubt, have come to your Lordships’ knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the circumpolar regions, by which the severity of the cold … in an impenetrable barrier of ice, has during the last two years greatly abated. This affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened …

November 20, 1817.

The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday  from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway.

 Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far North as 81 degrees 29 minutes.

 Soundings to 3,100 metres show the Gulf Stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have completely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the Eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have so far never ventured so far North, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. Within a few years it is predicted that, due to the ice melt, the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.

November 2, 1922,  The Washington Post.

Thanks to Rupert Wyndham, via JoNova.

Hey, Frank …

If you can divert your attention for a few moments from sexual abuse by the clergy, and the disenfranchisement of the Falkland Islanders, how about sparing a few thoughts for Sanal Edamaruku. You will, no doubt recall … being infallible and all, that Sanal was charged with blasphemy by the Catholic Church in India. He earned this distinction by exposing the miracle of Mumbai as a plumbing problem.

For anyone unfamiliar with the miracle, it involved water dripping from the toes of a crucifix, the overwhelmed faithful were collecting the holy water in little bottles. Sanal located the source in a nearby washroom. A very similar problem has been dubbed the miracle of Dunalley.

Well, it’s been a year now since arrest warrants were issued. Sanal has been denied bail in advance. He remains free by keeping away from home. Perhaps you could pray for him or something …

Job opportunity …

The man in charge of the body that oversees hunting in NSW national parks has been charged with illegal hunting and trespassing.

Game Council NSW acting chief Greg McFarland and another man were charged after police investigated claims two men trespassed onto a property near Mount Hope in western NSW and hunted illegally in December last year.

The NSW government are looking for a new looney to take over the asylum.

Your week … ?

Uh, mine?

Pretty good really, busy at work, no major hassles, rehearsals went well, charity gig at the Eye and Ear hospital this coming Sunday, did some recording on Garageband, bird banding Saturday morning with some good friends, caught a Pink Robin, first one for our study. Exciting. The dog’s on a diet so it really, really loves me. Oh and some arsehole declared nuclear war … how was yours?

Ya gotta laugh …

Super and Cyprus …

Let’s eat the rich …

Well let’s at least get seriously jealous and really hurt them …

After all it’s good that we let them employ people, pay lots of tax and spend money, we let them off  having to live on the age pension, we don’t make them live on New Start. Cool.

Let’s raid their super … big problem, one thing that the hysterical class warriors, from Rob Oakeshott to Wayne Swan via Fairfax’s Peter Martin, seem not to realise is that for people with squillions super offers a chance to reduce tax by a paltry amount. Here’s Peter Martin …

THINK about an executive on $1 million a year. Not quite one of Joel Fitzgibbon’s “battlers”, but someone several rungs above. His or her company pays a legislated $90,000 a year into a super fund of their choice, the payment is taxed at just 15 per cent. So instead of paying $41,850 in tax, the executive pays just $13,500. The gift from the tax system is $28,350.

What a terribly wicked rich person, well no what a complete load of bollocks, once the numbers are corrected it reads …

… a legislated maximum of $17,190 per year into a super fund of his or her choice; … The gift from the tax system is $5415.

The fact is payments into super are capped therefore the capacity to lower tax is also capped at a fairly low figure. The way to raise money from super is to forget the very rich, just hit all those who’ve been diligent in saving for their retirement. Those who gambled away their income have made their contribution.

But, notice too, the reference to a gift. I have worked hard, I have provided employment to others, we have paid our taxes and contributed to our retirement funds.

SOMEONE on $300k pays about $113k a year income (little or no govt benefits) tax yet someone on $50k a year pays about $7700 income tax (plus govt benefits). The person on $300k pays 14 times more tax for six times the wage than the person on $50k. (Terry … )

If you are going to call that amount of your earnings that the taxman allows you to keep a gift the Cyprus solution starts to look reasonable.